[Paleopsych] H-N: How Uncivilized! Reconfiguring Narratives of Innateness in Murray's Human Accomplishment by Mark Roberts
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How Uncivilized! Reconfiguring Narratives of Innateness in Murray's
Human Accomplishment by Mark Roberts
http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html
4.3.28
[Thanks to Ole Peter for this. I stopped reading Human Nature regularly
ever since Ian Pitchford had to give up his weekly digests due to his own
time constraints. He continues to run the Yahoo! group
evolutionary-psychology, which more or less emptied Human Evolution and
Behavior (which Howard Bloom characterized as "*the* place to be on
the Net") after that list got bogged down in high decibel arguments over
race and Jews. Ian has shown an amazing talent for shutting down
discussions at just the right point, esp. since many of his list's
participants are college professors and liable to get into trouble for
straying away from the strait and narrow.]
Evolutionary Psychology 2: 52-65
Book Review
How Uncivilized! Reconfiguring Narratives of Innateness in Murray's
Human Accomplishment.
A review of Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the
Arts and Sciences, 800B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray. New York:
HarperCollins, 2003.
Mark S. Roberts, Department of Philosophy, Suffolk County Community
College, Ammerman Campus, 533 College Road, Selden, NY 11784-2899,
USA.
Charles Murray, the most influential social thinker in America today,
[[9]1] has published a new book that purports to trace the provenance
of genius and accomplishment in the arts and sciences from 800 B.C.E
to 1950. The book fails to present a scientifically plausible,
logically convincing account of the subject at hand. It depends on
highly selective evidence to support the various central claims, and
this often-spurious evidence is reinforced with a welter of confusing
and sometimes superfluous statistical data that seems beyond the
comprehension of the average intelligent reader, and, in some cases, I
suspect, the statistical specialist. Moreover, Murray tends to
consistently eliminate, diminish or overlook much of the evidence that
would weaken or entirely refute his case for absolute Western
superiority in both the arts and sciences. But, even given its flaws,
Human Accomplishment is an unmitigated success, a brilliant shining
star in a movement that extends back nearly two centuries to the
nascent pseudo-scientific ideologies of "scientific" racism and
biodeterminism. The reason it is such a roaring success is that it
does not, in the end, intend to illuminate, enlarge, edify or inform,
but, rather, to demonstrate and establish the intrinsic pre-eminence
of a small group of elites, to differentiate human accomplishment on
the grounds of racial and intellectual superiority--which it in no
short measure succeeds in doing. It is precisely from this perspective
that I wish to examine and critically evaluate Human Accomplishment.
The Development of Racist Ideology
Among the several caveats appearing at the beginning of Human
Accomplishment, Murray stresses that the reader should not confuse his
book with those that attempt to give a historical account of the fall
and rise of the West--the type of account usually associated with
writers like Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. [[10]2] In this
regard he is entirely correct. The book is clearly not an attempt to
trace, in historical terms, the trajectory of the fall and rise of the
West, or to explain Western preeminence from the perspective of
comparative history. But, even so, the work is positioned
unambiguously in a set of interrelated traditions that aspire to
explain the supremacy of Western, primarily white, culture--those of
"scientific" racism, inner constitution, innateness, and, ultimately,
biodeterminism.
The idea of innateness is hardly a modern invention, as one can find
coherent expressions of it throughout the history of Western thought.
Aristotle, for example, argued that human difference in intellect and
therefore worldly position was entirely the result of a fixed natural
order. This characterization of innateness is perhaps most evident in
Aristotle's justification of human slavery. Although human slavery had
existed long before Aristotle, and chattel slavery (the ownership of
human beings as a form of property) was common from at least 500 BCE,
he was the first to develop a systematic philosophical position
regarding the nature of the slave and his or her station in the order
of things. Briefly stated, Aristotle's theory of slavery is derived
largely from his political thought. For him, the Greek political
paradigm was the ultimate indicator of civilization. Greek culture, he
argued, had evolved to the point where laws, self-rule and justice had
replaced the chaotic barbarism of much of the rest of the ancient
world. This idea of the capacity to rule politically extended to
individuals and "elements" as well. Civil society was viewed as
divided into those capable of ruling and those only capable of being
ruled. This distinction also involves Aristotle's notion of intellect
as opposed to physical strength. Some individuals have a preponderance
of intellect, others physical strength. Since intellect is supreme in
political life, those having mere physical power will naturally fall
under the sway of those who exercise intellect: "an element able `by
virtue of its intelligence to exercise fore-thought,' and an element
`able by virtue of its bodily power to do what the other element
plans.'" [[11]3]
Slavery, for Aristotle, is thus a more or less accurate reflection of
the natural state of things. Some rise up in nature to rule, others
are there but to serve. And the difference is rooted politically in
the natural ability to move from barbaric forms of governance to more
sophisticated ones, particularly those like the Greek polis. Indeed,
the Greek political and civil paradigm was the main indication of the
difference between civilized and brutish regimes. Brutish regimes lack
the faculty of intellect, living in a primitive state based on natural
affinity and sensuality:
And of foolish people those who by nature are thoughtless and live
their senses are brutish, like some races of the distant
barbarians, while those who are so as a result of disease (e.g.,
epilepsy) or of madness are morbid. . . It is plain that some
incontinence is brutish and some morbid, while only that which
corresponds to human self-indulgence is continence simply. [[12]4]
Aristotle also derives this idea of natural superiority and
inferiority from his conception of the relationship between soul and
body, since the soul has a natural superiority over the body, and that
superiority translates into a principle of necessity: "And it is clear
that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the
rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient." What
Aristotle is getting at is the "fact" that inferiority is the result
of the natural and metaphysical state of things, and therefore
irreversible. Those who are born superior will remain superior by
virtue of an undeviating, inevitable natural order: "from the hour of
their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."
Slaves, like women and lower animals, are thus no more than accurate
reflections of their natural inferiority, their set place in the
universal order of things. But the ineluctable order of things, this
inevitable ranking of individuals, is not at all "natural" in any
conventional sense of the term. Rather, it is a fully constructed
system, devised and articulated by Aristotle himself. Based on his
priorities and biases, the system is designed to coincide exactly with
and therefore justify the prevailing Greek political and social
structure. Slaves are beneficial to the expansion and development of
Greek culture, so they are deemed to be inferior and therefore
altogether suppressible--in many respects, even animal like. And this
inferior position is guaranteed by the sacrosanct order of nature.
By the nineteenth century the natural order of innateness emphasized
by Aristotle was transformed into a biosocial principle. It became a
standard in calculating the relative worth of particular people, races
and civilizations. Though many utilized the standard in some form or
other--including Kant, Lessing, Linnaeus, and the great anatomist
Cuvier--it was not directly applied to Western civilization, i.e.,
white culture and achievement, until the advent of racist ideology in
the work of the nineteenth century social and political thinker Arthur
Compte de Gobineau. As a racist ideologue, Gobineau did not fall back
on classical social and political theory, nor was he concerned overly
to find a theory of racial difference in the philosophical tradition
as a whole. Rather, he sought a new explanatory racist ideology in
what he conceived to be a kind of collective natural, "internal"
history. For Gobineau, the peoples composing a nation were pulsating
with a certain "germ," which carried their destiny. This "germ,"
though subject to certain types of invasive degeneration, was
irreversible and inevitable, sheltered from outside change, coursing
through the blood of a particular race or people. Gobineau also
rejected the idea of applying external data - particularly, cases of
individual achievement within a race--to the explanation of racial
inequality, basing inequality on purely physical and mental
characteristics that could be determined empirically. The environment
had virtually no effect on individual capacity. Each individual within
a given racial strain had an innate ability to achieve certain levels
of culture and civilization: "The true health of a people and the
cause of life and death were to be found, as Kant and Lessing had
observed, in `inner constitution.'" [[13]5]
Given his "empirical" method, what Gobineau referred to as "elements
of civilization" could be classified and expressed in "objective"
terms, such as relative proportions. In H. Hotz's detailed "Analytic
Introduction" to the English translation of Gobineau's Essai sur
l'inégalité des races humains (1853-55), a chart appears that divides
the races into three categories: intellect, animal propensities, and
moral manifestations. The relative disproportion of these
characteristics in the various races is instructive in understanding
Gobineau's general theory, as well as in early biodeterministic
thought. The white race is classified as having a "vigorous
intellect," "strong" animal propensities, and "highly cultivated"
moral manifestations," while the black race has a "feeble" intellect,
"partially latent" moral manifestations, but "very strong" animal
propensities." With an "objective" unilinear scale to determine the
relative humanness of individual races, those judged lowest on the
scale were subject to comparisons with the mindless, though
instinctually proficient, brutes and beasts. In effect, they were
doomed to an imposed set of limitations that could be calculated with
mathematical precision. And the only salvation for these lower races
was the intervention of the white race, which contained within it the
germ of perfection:
Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations
derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help,
and that society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves
the blood of the noble group that created it, provided that this
group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of our species.
[[14]6]
The cultural and political fate of a civilization, then, is largely
dependent on its racial composition. The more white germ stock that a
civilization can preserve, the greater the possibility of advancement.
The greater a civilization is contaminated by impure blood--i.e., that
of the black or yellow races--the less the chance of advancement.
The attractiveness of such a notion of racial
accomplishment--particularly, to the prevailing Teutonic types--set
off a wave of parallel racist conceptions of culture and advancement.
Gobineau had generated what at least appeared to be an objective means
of classifying and comparing racial characteristics and human
development: the exigencies of environment and external conditions in
general had been largely eliminated from his calculation, thus
rendering human achievement an incontrovertible "fact" of inner
constitution. The more scientifically subtle aspects of innateness,
however, were left to others--particularly, Paul Broca, the famed
French surgeon and anthropologist. His positivistic method in the
sciences expanded Gobineau's theory to include newly discovered ways
of calculating innate difference. Broca rejected virtually all forms
of speculative science, placing his faith in a positivistic, data
based approach to scientific research. This fondness for objectivity
was not, however, always present in his own research. Most of the
results of his anthropological and craniological experiments were
simply disguised confirmations of one of the dominant prejudices of
the time, that is, white males, Teutonic types, in the vocabulary of
racism, were at the very top of the intelligence pyramid and women and
the lower races occupied the bottom. His method, based on these
prejudices, consisted in formulating a conclusion commensurate with
this bias, and then manipulating the facts to fit that conclusion.
After having reviewed Broca's research for an extended period of time,
Stephen Jay Gould reached the following conclusion:
I found a definite pattern in his methods. He traversed the gap
between fact and conclusion by what may be the usual route -
predominately in reverse. Conclusions came first and Broca's
conclusions were the shared assumptions of most successful white
males during this period--themselves on top by the good fortune of
nature, and women, blacks, and the poor people below. His facts
were reliable (unlike Morton's), but they were gathered selectively
and then manipulated unconsciously in the service of prior
conclusions. By this route, the conclusions achieved not only the
blessings of science, but the prestige of numbers. [[15]7]
Indeed, what Broca had really discovered was a method by which one
could make just about any favored conclusion seem correct. Whether the
results were arrived at validly or not was of little significance;
what counted was that the so-called facts were correctly derived,
properly documented, and, most importantly, elaborately quantified.
Numbers became a sort of underlying, unchallenged truth of the
research, and if one could generate impressive enough statistics
regarding the object of inquiry, the validity of the conclusions would
inevitably follow.
Needless to say, many, many variations of this self-serving
statistical method issued from Broca's original approach. Comparative
anatomists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, experimental
psychologists and the like generated an immense quantity of
statistical data related to universal white supremacy in every
conceivable field of knowledge and endeavor. Blacks, women and other
races were "proven" to be inferior in the minutest detail, with the
"irrefutable" support of objectively derived statistical data. The
nineteenth century culmination of this wave of statistical proofs of
human worth occurred with the work of the English natural scientist
and biometrician, Sir Francis Galton. Galton articulated the modern
theory of eugenics in an extended article turned book, entitled
Hereditary Genius (1869). The gist of the book is that genius, of
course, was hereditary, and that those possessed of it should be
encouraged to propagate among their peers. Galton even encouraged a
national exam to determine genius, whose high-scorers would be brought
together, married at Westminster Abbey, and sent off to breed new
generations of British leaders, men of genius, and captains of
industry. This eugenicist trend led to the creation of various
statistical procedures, most of which were intended to provide
empirical data about the desirability of inbreeding the genetically
superior. With a simmering brew of quasi-science, arcane statistics,
and socially agreeable theory, Galton went on to establish entities
like the Anthropometric Laboratory for the study of genetic variation,
which, in the end, simply contributed to a somewhat new, statistically
oriented means of measuring inferiority, and thus reinforcing the
perpetual myth of white male superiority.
What is Charles Murray's Stake in Innateness?
Obviously, it is impossible to cover thoroughly the entire history of
innateness theory here--a theory that branches off into several
disciplines and includes important figures in experimental social
science, like H. H. Goddard, Havelock Ellis, and R. M. Yerkes. Suffice
to say that Charles Murray has followed a considerable tradition of
firm believers in the use and unequivocal truth of statistical
analysis in assigning inferiority to certain types and races. Although
there are no doubt instances of this approach in Murray's earlier work
on social welfare, Losing Ground, the most elaborate demonstration of
an appeal to statistics as means of black derogation appears in The
Bell Curve, co-authored with Richard Herrnstein. In his critique of
The Bell Curve, Gould characterizes the effort as one that "contains
no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its
anachronistic social Darwinism." The "social Darwinism" argument so
obvious in Murray and Herrnstein's text lands full force on blacks,
assuming that IQ test data is sufficient proof of inferior
intelligence in the black race, and that, further, this
"incontrovertible" statistical proof empowers an elite class to
abandon all efforts to improve the standing of a "black underclass" in
society, even sanctions their eventual isolation and, in the end,
their internment:
Over the next decades, it will become broadly accepted by the
cognitive elite that the people we now refer to as the underclass
are in that condition through no fault of their own but because of
inherent shortcomings about which little can be done.. . .In short,
by custodial state, we have in mind a high-tech and more lavish
version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of
the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go
about its business. In its less benign forms, the solutions will
become more and more totalitarian. . .One possibility is that a
variety of old police practices--especially the stop and
frisk--will quietly come back into use in new guises. New prisons
will continue to be built, and the cells already available will be
used more efficiently to incarcerate dangerous offenders. .
.Technology will provide new options for segregating and containing
criminals, as the electronic bracelets are being used to enforce
house arrest (or maybe "neighborhood arrest"). . .The underclass
will become even more concentrated spatially than it is today.
[[16]8]
This harsh solution, however, is built upon several false assumptions.
To begin with, Murray and Herrnstein, following the abovementioned
tradition of innateness, suppose that IQ is a fully objectifiable
entity that is situated somewhere in the human brain--in short, they
reify intelligence. Arguments against this move abound. Gould ranks
the reification of intelligence as one of the two deadly sins of
innateness theory, by arguing that intelligence is really a vast array
of skills and abilities, immeasurable by any single standard. The
psychologist Howard Gardner, likewise, offers a theory of multiple
intelligences, employing a complex set of physical and mental skills
as standards for measurement. And, more recently, studies on emotional
intelligence have been advanced in the behavioral sciences. Another
error of The Bell Curve authors lies in their assertion that human
worth can actually and accurately be ranked on a unilinear scale. This
process of unilinear ranking consists of extrapolating data from
various statistical protocols and then arranging them in an ascending
order--in this case, ranking blacks well below whites and other groups
in intelligence. But their conclusions are, once again, based on a
false assumption: that within group heritability can explain
differences between groups. Gould explains this fundamental error as
the "central fallacy of using the substantial heritability of within
group IQ (among whites, for example) as an explanation for average
differences between groups (whites vs. blacks, for example)." [[17]9]
The problem with this sort of manipulation is that environmental
factors affecting each group vary significantly. To argue that lower
black IQ scores are strictly the result of heritable traits within the
group overlooks the fact that each of the groups exists under largely
different socio-economic, educational, dietary, etc. conditions. If
these conditions were improved over a period of time, the IQ disparity
might well also improve, which was the case with the minus-fifteen
percent immigrant populations entering the U.S. at the turn of
century.
In the end, however, Murray and Herrnstein are not really concerned to
produce an objective and scientifically sound basis for IQ comparison.
Rather, their interest lies fully in using statistical analysis to
support a social imperative: class distinctions are not determined by
history or socio-economic conditions, but are the result of innate
characteristics that are entirely unalterable through external means.
Class is a given of biology, and race is a function of biological
givens. In short, the white race has earned its dominance, not by
repression, exclusion, preference, force or discrimination, but by
some irrevocable genetic superiority, one that is buried deep within
the minute ganglia and neurons of the human brain.
The Uses of Innateness in Human Accomplishment
Although Murray does not use IQ statistics in Human Accomplishment to
determine Western superiority in culture and science, he does
nonetheless create an "irrevocable given" to solidify his position.
This time, the incontrovertible proof lies in a vast compilation of
entries from source biographies, encyclopedias, and dictionaries of
prominent individuals throughout both the ancient and modern history
of world science, art, and culture in general. In fact, Murray is able
to identify no less than 4,002 worldwide geniuses who have soared
above ordinary mortals for nearly three millennia. These geniuses are
deemed geniuses not so much due to their basic contributions to
culture or science--though Murray does offer a number of criteria for
assessing the legacy of genius--but due to the fact that they were
given significant linear column space in widely acknowledged and
accepted record books of accomplishment. For Murray, it seems that
accomplishment bears some resemblance to a road map--an extra inch or
so is equivalent to a considerable number of miles. Moreover, with a
few statistical adjustments here and there, Murray claims that this
method is entirely objective, eliminating or accounting for any
possible variables. The picture of all world achievement, then, is
neatly and completely laid out in an "objective" skein of statistics
culled painstakingly from the world's most definitive dictionaries and
encyclopedias of achievement and eminence.
If the above method and results seem familiar, they are. This is
precisely what Galton attempted to do on a much smaller scale in his
Hereditary Genius, that is, provide an "objective," statistical method
for determining superiority with, in his case, the use of obituaries
and a single biographical dictionary. Murray's revival of the old
eugenicist "axiom" suffers from all of its obvious flaws. Like
Galton's conception of hereditary genius, it is a method that is
constructed to realize a presupposition about race, sex and class,
and, one might add, socioeconomic standing. The white, mostly male,
race is superior due to some irreversible and innate condition--in
this case, overwhelming evidence of recorded genius. Other groups are
inferior for the same irrevocable reasons. The force of this
presupposition is obvious in a number of Murray's calculated
oversights. He does, for example, spend considerable time and space
acknowledging the contribution of China to world science and culture.
But, in the end, the Chinese contribution is considered inferior to
that of the West. Why? Basically, the Chinese were never able to
measure their science in terms of a "framework that would enable the
accumulation of scientific knowledge." [[18]10] But the idea of a
"framework" presupposes a number of conditions that were largely
available to Western science, but did not for the most part exist in
China. One of those conditions was effective means of distance
communication. China was for most of its history a vast isolated
country, divided into numerous districts and provinces, each having
its own forms of governance. Communication was thus not in any way
uniform or, in many cases, even existent. That a scientist working in
Western China, let alone a lay-person, would know of, record, or
comment upon the discovery of another scientist working in an eastern
province was highly unlikely. Indeed, Joseph Needham, the great
historian of Chinese science and civilization, recounts a story in
which a group of Chinese scientists were absolutely fascinated by a
mechanical clock shown to them by Jesuit missionaries, completely
unaware that the Chinese had invented precisely this type of clock two
centuries earlier. [[19]11] In essence, then, the Chinese may have
demonstrated--according to Needham, did in fact
demonstrate--significant genius in various areas of science. But this
"genius" for creativity and invention is overshadowed by Western
science simply because the Chinese were unable to erect a "framework
for the accumulation of scientific knowledge." That is to say, were
unable to "objectively" quantify scientific and cultural achievement
in some unified, well-structured way.
Murray's strategy is quite transparent. Without a "framework" for
quantification, achievement really does not count. If individual
achievements haven't been minutely and properly recorded, analyzed,
disseminated, and set down in writing--techniques much more common in
the West than elsewhere-- they are subject to being overlooked,
diminished or dismissed entirely. Such is clearly the case in Murray's
treatment of African and Mezzo-American art and achievement. For
example, in the 624 pages of text that constitute the body of Human
Accomplishment, the whole of African culture is given six
references--significantly less than the biographical dictionary
entries for Forrest Moulton (U.S. astronomer). Africans simply did not
meet the standards imposed by Murray for the determination of artistic
achievement--in short, the entire contribution of Africa in the arts
was merely "decorative," which, in Murray's estimation, made them too
insignificant to even record as art items. Indeed, Murray tends to
reduce thousands of years of African artistic achievement to the mere
production of functional items: "Shall we treat functional
objects--gracefully designed eating utensils, baskets, warrior's
shields, fabrics from non-European cultures as works of art?" Just in
case we do, Murray has a quick remedy: "We will have to include
centuries of European production of beautiful things. . . an endless
variety of categories of beautiful things coming out of every European
country." [[20]12] Of course, the claim--that Africans merely produced
"functional objects"--is patently false: they produced structurally
complex and aesthetically striking art objects, including both
conventional and monumental sculptures, and numerous other purely
aesthetic items that profoundly influenced Western European art from
the mid-nineteenth century onward. But to maintain the exclusivity and
centrality of "objective standards" for assessing accomplishment,
Murray must regard all of African art as devoted to creating basic
utensils, just a knife and fork kind of culture, and therefore
entirely lacking the intellectual "framework" necessary for cultural
accomplishment.
Thus, in Human Accomplishment, the traditional theory of innateness is
simply transferred to and grounded in a complex statistical model,
based on yet another "objective measure." Virtually all human worth in
the arts and sciences is distilled down to a compilation of expert
opinion. The compilation is then elaborated statistically, adjusted
and weighted to balance out "external" factors, and presented as the
ultimate measure of world art and science. But the measure is in
itself reductive and closed, in that it is formulated not so much to
objectively measure human accomplishment, but to once again confirm an
age-old bias about race, sex, and class. This is obvious in the
various oversights and exclusions in the book: Black Africans have no
science to speak of and are only producers of practical items, like
eating utensils, shields and textiles. This notion follows precisely
the long-established view of scientific racism regarding inferior
cultures. The lack of high art and scientific discovery indicates
inferior intellect and sensibility; it is palpable evidence of
backwardness, of primitiveness. Or, as Gobineau puts it, ". . . .no
Negro race is seen as the initiator of a civilization. Only when it is
mixed with some other can it even be initiated into one. Similarly, no
spontaneous civilization is to be found among the yellow races; and
when the Aryan blood is exhausted stagnation supervenes." [[21]13] So,
even though Murray does not introduce explicit racist ideology in
Human Accomplishment, he still conveys precisely the same message as
thinkers like Gobineau, Broca, the IQ hereditarians, and the like:
white males, "Europeans" and "North Americans" in Murray's
terminology, are on top and other races lag way behind. The inviolable
order of superiority/inferiority remains, despite the fact that Murray
claims he has adjusted all the relevant variables.
What Agendas Subtend Innateness?
To be sure, inherent White supremacy is not the sole message conveyed
by Human Accomplishment. The book not only follows the conventions of
racial science, but also touches upon virtually all of the ideological
points of American reactionary conservatism--largely concealed, I
should add, by the statistical jargon of European eminence in the arts
and sciences. The prime target of Murray's conservatism is, obviously,
multiculturalism. His support of Eurocentricism is rife in most of the
book's material. Indeed, one could argue that support of
Eurocentricism is a principal by-product of Murray's entire project.
He is not shy, however, about demonstrating explicitly the
disproportionate superiority of European culture and science, making
the claim that 97 percent of the accomplishment in the scientific
inventories occurred in Europe and North America. He claims, among
other things, to prove this by carefully choosing two books which tend
to correspond exactly to his own statistical conclusions, but which,
on the surface (the book jackets, to be precise) appear to support a
multiculturalist view. After performing what he generously refers to
as "literary criticism," that is, comparing the book jacket copy
(which generally tend to exaggerate the book's purpose and value) to
the texts themselves, Murray concludes that the two books on
multiculturalism weren't really on multiculturalism, but, rather,
profoundly in support of his own Eurocentric hypothesis. [[22]14]
What's missing here? First of all, Murray attributes absolute
statistical certainty regarding European and North American
accomplishment to his own compilation of scientific inventories. As we
have seen, his compilation is biased from the outset, secreting a
long-standing predisposition about race, sex, class and achievement.
Moreover, as Judith Shulevitz, in her New York Times review of Human
Accomplishment correctly argues, written scientific inventories were
infinitely more common to Europe and North America than to China, the
Far East in general, Africa, the Mideast, South America, or the
various island civilizations. [[23]15] And to argue, as Murray does,
that the fact that inventories did not exist indicates that
accomplishment in the arts and sciences in non-European cultures was
meager, is patently absurd. The only reasonable conclusion that one
can draw from the fact that inventories do not exist is that
inventories were either lost, unaccounted for, or, more likely, were
just not made. In short, the non-existence of a collection of
biographical entries says virtually nothing about whether important
scientific and artistic contributions existed in a given civilization.
Thus, Murray turns the statistical certainty and preponderance of
entries claim against multiculturalism. Without a store of collected
entries in a variety of dictionaries and encyclopedias--that is, a
fairly large statistical sampling--non-European cultural achievement
can only muster a meager 3 percent of world achievement in the arts
and sciences. This is a fact that in Murray's mind, should finally and
completely undo the egregious "myths" of multiculturalism.
With the specter of multiculturalism out of the way, Murray takes on
another conservative aversion: Godlessness. Without taking account of
Christianity's unparalleled repression of new ideas, the routine
imprisonment of humanists and dissenters, the suppression of
scientific progress, the burnings at the stake of so-called heretical
thinkers, etc., Murray goes on to identify it as the primary source of
Western individualism, which, in his reckoning, was handmaiden to
accomplishment. One would think that arresting and indefinitely
imprisoning Galileo, burning Giordano Bruno at the stake, penalizing
every scientist who even breathed the fact that the earth revolved
around the sun, would be sufficient reason to at least take pause when
arguing for the "inspiration" provided science and art by
Christianity. But, as is often the case with Murray, he tends to
overlook destabilizing factors, arguing instead for his conception of
the big picture, the gift of individualism so generously given by the
late Medieval Christian Church to European elites. These elites,
moreover, were given an even greater gift once Martin Luther nailed
his 95 theses to the cathedral doors. Accomplishment became a reality
of everyday life, and one did not have to wait for some heavenly
finger to judge and acquit. Life, so dull and boring before Luther and
the reformers, was now given purpose and direction: "The sense that
life in general has a purpose, as opposed to being pointless, and the
sense that this life is uniquely important, and is not just one of an
ongoing sequence of lives." [[24]16]
But all of this joy and creativity shared by the European elites came
to a somewhat abrupt halt. By the latter part of the nineteenth
century, a dark pessimism spread over Europe. The forces of atheism
and fatalism, particularly as expressed in the work of Nietzsche and
Freud, had, remarkably, convinced virtually all of the European elites
that life was now, once again, pointless and, worse, Godless: "After
Freud, Nietzsche, and others with similar messages, the belief in man
as rational and volitional took a body blow. It became fashionable in
the Europe of the early 20C to see humans as unwittingly acting out
neurosis and subconscious drives. God was mostly dead among the
European creative elites; morality became relative. These and allied
beliefs substantially undermined the belief in creative elites that
their lives had purpose or that their talents could be efficacious."
[[25]17]
Seen from another perspective, however, one might argue that this dark
period at the beginning of the twentieth century was not all that dim.
After all, virtually every important and influential modernist
movement flourished in the period. Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism,
and Surrealism emerged in the fine arts. Experimental literary forms
exfoliated, with unique contributions by authors like Jarry, Joyce,
Mann, Pound, Kafka, Musil, and many more. Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and
Berg, to name just a few, developed brilliant new variations in
musical composition and structure. Einstein was even able to envision
the new physics in the calamitous darkness of modern irrationality.
Obviously, Murray's analysis of the modern era is patently absurd, a
risible misinterpretation to anyone even remotely aware of the
modernist contributions to art and science made in the latter part of
the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. But seen for what it
is--an attack on modernist agnosticism, Godlessness, and cultural and
moral relativism--it makes sense. With his sympathies lying squarely
with the American Christian Right, Murray is compelled to spell out
intellectual history entirely in terms of this sort of ideology. In a
certain sense, Joyce must be seen as an "arid" writer, devoid of the
values imparted through the Christian tradition. Cézanne, Picasso,
Duchamp, all the modernists, must necessarily be viewed as inferior,
as leaders of a great decline in Western creativity. But the claim for
the great decline, the "descent of man," is not the result of some
objective historical analysis of the arts and sciences in the modern
period; rather, it results from the imposition of a supposition about
the role of Christianity in Western achievement. Christianity brings
light, inspiration and individualism, modernism brings only darkness
and despair. Once again, reactionary ideology perfectly mirrors the
entire history and intent of Western creativity in the arts and
sciences.
The conservative penchant for the inevitability of absolute--read,
white male--authority is also addressed in Human Accomplishment. In
this regard Murray pays special attention to the extreme differences
between ordinary mortals and the 4,002 recorded geniuses, even going
so far as to quote a passage that compares the ordinary with worms in
face of some of these remarkable men. These giants, Murray argues, are
the result of a "magnificent inequality" that is wholly quantifiable,
and therefore an indisputable fact. But the "magnificent inequality"
is wholly the invention of Murray, and, in this case, used as a means
of justifying a set of social relations, which, in reality, are
infinitely more complex than Murray leads us to believe. Social and
intellectual ranking are largely the result of extraordinarily
intricate socio-economic, political, cultural, and historical
conditions and relations, not the stipulations of conservative
ideology. Moreover, one just might not feel worm-like or have the
irresistible urge to prostrate oneself before such giants as Alfonso X
of Castile, Karl L. Immerman, Antonis Mor van Dashorst, William McCune
or C. H. D. Buys-Ballot, earth scientist.
In the end, one must ask a simple question about Human Accomplishment:
Why would anyone want to read such a book? It is filled with what turn
out to be arcane, difficult, largely incomprehensible statistics, flow
charts, bell curves, directional charts, indices, appendices, and so
on. Is it really important to the general reader that the combined
separate subscores on The Correlation Matrix for the Index Sources for
the Astronomy Inventory place Taton two cuts above Wussing? Or that
Wussing nearly caught up with Taton on the Chemistry Index, placing
just one notch below him? Or that Giovanni Animucchia had only one
entry in the Roster of Significant Figures in Music and Giovanni
Bononcini had three? Moreover, the book is filled with false and often
absurd claims. How could one possibly believe that James Joyce was a
ruined, "arid" writer, drawn away from a sense of purpose, goodness,
light and Godliness by Freud and Nietzsche? That the vivid,
life-affirming canvases of artists like Matisse, Éduoard Vuillard,
Pierre Bonnard, and Robert Delaunay were the result of a gloomy
pessimism that engulfed modernist Europe? Or that over countless
millennia the entire continent of black Africa did not create a single
artwork? The book is also filled with convenient and obvious
omissions--the fact, for instance, that Plato and Aristotle, two of
the highest scorers in the world achievement indices, could never have
achieved their towering positions without those lowly slaves who,
among many other things, toiled deep in the silver, gold, copper, and
iron mines that enriched the Greek states, thus allowing the Patrician
class its leisure and learning.
The negatives go on, and on--but it is, strangely enough, a foregone
conclusion that the book will be read, and read widely. The main
reason for this sort of popularity is the fact that the book fits
seamlessly into a long-standing invention of conservative ideology:
innateness. And innateness, in its turn, proves what Aristotle had
first suggested and Gobineau and others had later calculated: that the
status quo was a direct reflection of an irrevocable inner
constitution, that certain types and races are destined to lead while
others can but slavishly follow. And the attractiveness of this idea
is made even more attractive by Murray's persistent claim that Human
Accomplishment provides definitive proof for what had, up till now,
been merely a hypothesis: that elites rule by nature rather than by
circumstance. Indeed, it is the final word in the game of finality
played out over the past two centuries by the racist ideologues.
Notes
[26]1 This statement may sound a bit extreme, but if one looks closely
at American sociological and political theory with regard to its
effect on actual legislation, then Murray ranks right on top as
theorist. For example, his book, Losing Ground, served as the model
for welfare reform during and well after the Reagan Administration.
The Bell Curve has often been taken up by the U.S. Congress as a model
for educational reform. And his "Bloody Code-like" suggestions for
policing and criminal justice reform have been applied by many
municipal administrations--most recently, the Giuliani administration
in New York City.
[27]2 Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence
in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, (New York: Harper & Row,
2003), p. xvii.
[28]3 Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West,
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 53.
[29]4 Ibid., p. 55
[30]5 Ibid., p. 267
[31]6 Arthur Compte de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, (New
York: Howard Fettis, 1967), p. 210.
[32]7 Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, (New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 1996), p. 117.
[33]8 Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free
Press, 1994), pp. 523-524.
[34]9 Gould, op. cit., p. 369.
[35]10 Murray, op. cit., p. 237.
[36]11 Robert Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 years of Science,
Discovery, and Invention, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 7
[37]12 Murray, op. cit., p. 261.
[38]13 Gobineau, op. cit., p. 212.
[39]14 See Murray, op. cit., pp. 254-255.
[40]15 Judith Shulevitz, "The Best and the Brightest," New York Times
Book Review, Sunday, November, 30, 2003, p. 12.
[41]16 Murray, op. cit., p. 406.
[42]17 Ibid., p. 407.
Email
[43]Mark Roberts
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